Read Crisis as a trigger for new ways of thinking about politicshere.
This volume explores the complex theme of crisis in European political thought from antiquity to the twenty-first century. It investigates the innovations in political thought that sprang from crisis, as well as the conceptual challenges thinkers faced when dealing with the devastation wrought by spiritual, economic and political crises. In so doing, Crisis and Renewal also examines the ways in which crisis often became the site of renewal. As an object of theoretical reflection, and as a pivotal element of our vocabulary, the notion of crisis is often applied, indiscriminately and without clarity, to a huge variety of domains.This volume provides a historically informed analysis of what it means to reflect on and theorise about crisis.
Contributors are: Erica Benner, Niall Bond, Nathaniel Boyd, Andrea Catanzaro, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, Alberto Clerici, Cesare Cuttica, Annalisa Furia, George Gallwey, Kai Gräf, Ferenc Hörcher, Paschalis M. Kitromilides, László Kontler, Adriana Luna-Fabritius, Clara Maier, Janine Murphy, Adrian O’Connor, and Mark Somos.
Cesare Cuttica teaches British History at Paris 8. His publications focus on a variety of early modern topics, from absolutism to democracy, as well as on the methodology of intellectual history. He is a member of the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History.
László Kontler is Professor of History at Central European University (Budapest-Vienna). His research and publications focus on intellectual history, the history of political thought, translation and reception, and the production and circulation of knowledge in early modern, mainly Enlightenment Europe.
“Si tratta di un volume di grande interesse, che indaga uno di quei concetti fondamentali del pensiero politico occidentale, il cui uso – e abuso – ne ha spesso consunto e compromesso l’efficacia ermeneutica. […] Data la complessità dell’oggetto e le sue molteplici variazioni di significato, il volume ospita contributi di studiosi di diversa provenienza geografica, i quali declinano il tema attraverso una pluralità di approcci metodologici, che tuttavia non compromettono la coralità e la coerenza del risultato scientifico” - Pietro Sebastianelli, in: Storia del pensiero politico 1/2023, p. 152
1 What Does κρίσις Entail? The Problem of ‘Decision and/or Judgement’ in Plato’s Republic and Laws Andrea Catanzaro
2 Critique and Crisis in Context: Rereading Reinhart Koselleck’s Interpretation of the Enlightenment
Kai Gräf
PART 2 Critical Moments
3 Crisis as a Motivation for Innovative Reflection in Ancient and Modern Political Thought
Paschalis M. Kitromilides
4 Pathologies of Democratic Crisis: Lessons from Athens and Florence
Erica Benner
5 Democracy and Crisis in the 1640s in England: The Ochlocratic Moment
Cesare Cuttica
6 The Crisis of the Spanish Monarchy and the Renewal of the Foundations of Early-Modern Neapolitan Political Thought: The Nation as a New Political Actor
Adriana Luna-Fabritius
7 From Regeneration to Resignation: “Crisis” and Crises in Revolutionary France
Adrian O’Connor
8 Treating Revolutionary Sickness. Crisis and the Formative Years of German Liberalism (1834–1866)
Janine T. Murphy
PART 3 Escaping Crisis
9 Houses Without Cities: The Dialectic of Political Crisis and Familial Resilience
Mark Somos
10 Overcoming a Crisis in an Early Modern Urban Context. Althusius on Concord and Prudence
Ferenc Hörcher
11 Alexander Hamilton on Crises of Sovereignty and the Oeconomy of Public Credit (1775–1791)
George Gallwey
PART 4 Crisis and Thinkers
12 In publicis malis. Justus Lipsius and the ‘Double Face’ of Neostoicism in the European Wars of Religion
Alberto Clerici
13 The Constitution of Crisis: Politics, Decline and Decision in Hegel’s Verfassungsschrift Nathaniel Boyd
14 Philosophies of History as Responses to Crises: Ferdinand Tönnies’
Community and Society Niall Bond
15 Crisis and Vulnerability in Hannah Arendt’s Political Thought: Political Action, Judgment and the Figure of the ‘Conscious Pariah’
Annalisa Furia
16 Civilisations and Political Elites in Critical Times: The Perspectives of Arnold J. Toynbee and Samuel P. Huntington
Patricia Chiantera-Stutte
Index
Primarily academic readers in political thought, political theory, philosophy and history of ideas; given the broad chronological and thematic span, also students in these fields and a wider readership.